A Day in the Life of a Hotelier

Staying in a glamorous hotel room, frequenting room service and relaxing with all of the offered amenities may be tranquil for the guest, but ensuring this experience is as restorative as possible for each guest is a rather strenuous job. Behind all that luxurious serenity is a whirlwind of planning, managing, budgeting and putting out fires.

The day-to-day functions of a hotelier are unpredictable. As any hotelier will tell you, no two days are the same. With different guests, different shift workers and different influencers, each day brings a new challenge. Each day will generally consist of operational meetings, ensuring quality standards, visiting with staff, maximizing room space and attending to the urgent issues that are bound to arise. However these tasks are assigned is determined by the urgency of each one and where the particular hotel needs the most attention.

Staying organized is key to running a successful property. Streamlining a hotelier’s schedule will help to ensure that the management of the entire hotel will follow. While each day will be different, it is important to prioritize tasks based on order of importance as well as the size of the task. Hoteliers have a set schedule of their days with a prioritized list of which tasks need to be addressed first. With a flood of issues falling at their feet on a daily basis, it is important to keep tasks organized to ensure that everything is done in a timely manner. Influential hotelier Jason Pomeranc of the Thompson Hotels group starts each day with a meeting with all of his general managers. Other meetings follow to hammer out logistics such as restaurant offerings, amenities and promotions.

While the schedule may be chaotic, filling these shoes takes heavy doses of organizational skills and managerial abilities. Not only does the hotelier need to keep his or her personal schedule neatly organized, the daily tasks of the managers below him or her need to be ironed out as well. This prevents wires from crossing, rooms from being mismanaged, and shows guests the best face of the property possible. An unorganized hotelier makes for an unorganized hotel, which is not ripe for guest satisfaction. Making a clear plan among the frantic fires is not simple, but it is just another day in the life of a hotelier.